Monday, October 24, 2011

Don Brash: Man on a mission

Brash flies off to money meetingsAct Leader Don Brash left for London last night, in what was intended as a secret mission to discuss ways to fix the world's broken economy. He was to have been in an ANZ Bank corporate box for tonight's Rugby World Cup final. Instead, he will be at cruising altitude between Hong Kong and Heathrow, reliant on match updates from the pilot.

The Herald on Sunday editorial on this (which are surprisingly good editorials by the way - much to my shock) was torturous over Don's sterile leadership style that cringes at glad handling the punters at Rugby games but travels economy for economic wonk tank meetings with economists terrified the 4 horsemen of the financial ratings Apocalypse have all arrived early for a 'chat'.

You have to hand it to The Don, he's right. The growing Armageddon brewing in the markets has all the naked fear of a complete meltdown where words like catastrophic make their meaning truly known. That our attention has been caught by the pretty rugby games while genuine questions of economic structural reform are being asked should surprise no one, but hegemonic economic failure is the sort of shit that hits you no matter how much in denial you are.

The problem for Don is that it is his very free market deregulated low tax dogma that has caused the collapse inspired by venal corporate greed on Wall street in 2008 so asking him for more of the same failed economic philosophy to solve the current free market collapse is like getting medical advice from Tobacco lobbyists.

That throat burning acid reflux of rage you're feeling at the thought of free market architects being asked to come up with more loopy free market bullshit to solve the deregulated mess they're theories created in the first place, tells you that you're in flavour country.

5 Comments:

...at the thought of free market architects being asked to come up with more loopy free market bullshit to solve the deregulated mess they're theories created in the first placeUhm, no. Like, really, not at all. Bank bailouts, quantitative easing (aka money printing), and historic deficits (8-14% of GDP in pretty much every Western country) are the "answers" our leaders and central bankers are championing to "solve" the financial crisis. This has literally NOTHING to do with the "free market" in any way shape or form. If I am wrong about this, I would love to hear how.

Why if a bank is not profitable does it get a bailout? Yet if a hospital can't afford new equipment they often close whole wards?

The history of privatising the profits and nationalising the loses has got to the point where the US Govt. has spent or guaranteed 9 trillion USD. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/04/business/20090205-bailout-totals-graphic.html

The system has failed everyone so badly, due to no oversight or poor ignorant oversight that it has caused the worst crisis of my generation. We here in NZ are so very lucky to have been cushioned by large reserves in EQC, ACC and The Cullen Fund and combined with Fontera are the only reason we are not in a PIIGS situation. Remember we don't have a big sister in Germany to bail us out.

Now I would prefer they spent in on banks burning money than killing or displacing millions of Iraqis and Afghans.

Surely if you were to spend such money there would be a few things ahead on my list:Like insulating every house in the US, books in every school, health care, renewable energy projects, or giving every citizen 40k most of this would go back to a bank anyway.

the free market low tax deregulation dogma is to blame where we are...Excessive debt (public and private) and leverage are the chief culprits of GFC - it is true that free markets and deregulation are at least partially responsible for that. However, the solution in a "free market" (as defined by a dictionary) would be to default the bad debt, resulting in both debtors AND lenders going bankrupt. This has not been allowed to happen, instead idiots like Bernanke are compounding the problem with even MORE debt - the very antithesis of a free market solution. What we have now is probably best described as "crony capitalism" - the rich must absolutely not be allowed to lose any money. But a free market it is definitely not (and arguably never was).